Speaker 1: We seem to be in a war against science and research,
which is causing anxiety among us old geezers, grateful for
anti seizure meds that guard against us suddenly shaking uncontrollably
on the street corner and strangers having to remember first
aid from four AH to keep us from strangling on
a hot argon. When we're not reading about that, we
see news of low frequency seismic waves that can travel
for hundreds of miles underground and cause tall brick buildings
to crash to the ground, which is disturbing to us
in Manhattan. And then there's news of mister and missus J. D. Vance,
who announced their trip to Greenland to see the dog
sled races, only to be told nobody invited you. So
they flew to the US military base at Patufik for
three hours, and mister Vance announced that Greenland needed American
defense whether it wanted it or not. He did not
change the name of the area to Pitifilm. However, interesting
time we live in and Wisconsin elected a Supreme Court
judge other than the one Elon Musk had favored, and
offered large sums of money to voters. But the crucial
news is that spring is coming. The baseball season has begun,
and I will wend my way to centerfield and get
a broad view of the action. And I will do
the last big outdoor prairie home companion of my life
at Tanglewood on June twenty first, and then, unless RFK
Junior allows dementia research to proceed, I will retire to
shady acres and play parcheesy. I'm enjoying being eighty two
more than I thought I would when I was your age.
I thought I'd be cranky and irritable, but I'm not.
I imagined that if the U. S. Government canceled research contracts
for institutions that used certain terms, such as Gulf of
Mexico instead of Gulf of America, the correct term, that
I would be upset about it. I'm not. I simply
find it of interest and I move on. If the
Justice Department told me you cannot cast scorn upon an
elected government official, I would say, the idiot doesn't even
know how to punctuate his first two initial I believe
I know right from wrong, and I think about it
on a daily basis, and also intensely. On Sunday morning,
shortly before eleven depending how long the sermon goes. The
sermon itself is sinful in that it falls short of perfection.
And sometimes the attempt of woman or man to approach
God in words is so inadequate that it's best to
tune out. And I do, And sometimes I write a
limerick in the bulletin. Was Donald J. Trump a recruit
in the Russian's quest for a route in to the
Oval Office by way of a novice? Trump poopoos it,
pooh putin. But I sit up straight during confession, and
I am disappointed by the brevity of the Anglican liturgy,
spoken briskly in unison, which would be sufficient for a
small child, but a man my age needs more time.
I envy the Catholics who can come in on Saturday
and find a priest in a booth, his ear to
a little window, waiting for me to recite the entire
epic account of my sins. I was a boss for
many years, and I committed sins of careless business and arrogance,
and stifled promising talents. And I was a pitiful parent
and miserable mate. And my memory is full of downright
dumb things, not so much hell raising as having been
an outstanding disappointment, sloughing off from the writing and offering
inferior goods to a radio audience. And I count on
confession to put the mounds and hillocks of trash behind
me and start anew And by God, it works, it
really does. I walk home along Amsterdam Avenue and I
look forward to the wind. My fundamentalist upbringing trains the
memory to be accusatory. But the grandeur of the acolytes
walking tall and proud, the majestic woman swinging the censure,
the vestments and candles, the stateliness of the King James
readings all work to stifle my peasant superstitions. I leave
the sanctuary calmed and renewed, honest to God, at least
for a while. And often I skip coffee hour because
I don't want to hear about the same stuff in
the first paragraph. All the way home along Amsterdam, I
feel it doesn't matter. I don't know about your church,
but in ours, we don't pray for stupidity, cruelty and
supercilious pride and smug disdain. I see dads pushing tiny
kids and strollers, and a mom following with a toddler,
and I pray for each of them as they pass me,